Editor's Note: This series of writings, by Bill Ferguson of
"How to Divorce as Friends" (
www.divorceasfriends.com ), may at first seem like what you would do
"when it's all over", but in reality what he describes and what he teaches here
is exactly what happens, and exactly the things we ALL need to learn if we are
to "save our marriage" or create a healthy relationship.

Whether we do it "Bill's way" or another way, here are
valuable lessons, succinctly written, and in a short and concise form, pretty
much all we need to know and do to have healthy relationships. Enjoy, learn, and
please visit his website!

Whether you want to get a divorce or save your
marriage, the action you take now becomes very important.

You can either interact in a way that restores
love and forwards cooperation or you can interact in a way that creates more
pain and suffering. Usually we interact in a way that creates more suffering.

We have so much hurt and upset, we lose our
ability to see clearly. All we can do is fight, resist, hang on or withdraw.
This in turn destroys love and fuels the cycle of conflict. This cycle of
conflict then brings out the worst in people.

To be most effective in handling your situation,
this cycle of conflict needs to end. This is true whether you want to save
your marriage or get a divorce. Fortunately, it only takes one person to end
the conflict. This site will show you how.

As a former divorce attorney, 15% of my clients
never divorced and the ones who did were able to part as friends.

No matter how painful or destructive your
relationship may be today. You can end the conflict and heal your
relationship, one human being to another.

If you decide to get a divorce you can save a
fortune in attorney fees. You can also avoid a tremendous amount of suffering.

The process for handling your situation is
relatively simple, you just need to know the steps. As you read the various
sections and do what they say, you will profoundly change both your
relationship and your life.

How you relate to the other person determines how
that person will relate to you. How you relate to each other determines
whether your relationship will be painful or supportive.

Once you discover your role in the problem, you
can do something about it.

Unfortunately, we seldom notice that we have
anything to do with what is happening. All we can see is how the other person
treats us. We then treat the other person accordingly.

If we receive love and appreciation, we'll give
love and appreciation. If we receive criticism and resentment, we'll give
criticism and resentment.

We treat the other person according to how
that person treats us.

The problem with this is that the other person is
doing exactly the same thing. That person treats you according to how you
treat him or her.

When you treat each other based on how you get
treated, there is no telling what will happen. It's like sailing with no one
at the helm. When no one is in charge of the ship, you're likely to end up on
the rocks.

Usually it's just a matter of time until someone
gets upset. That person then puts up his or her walls of protection and either
resists, attacks or withdraws.

Then the other person gets upset and does the
same thing. Then the first person gets more upset and reacts more forcefully
toward the other.

Without knowing, you create a cycle of
conflict -- a cycle of resisting, attacking and withdrawing from each other.

This cycle of conflict then continues on and on
without either person ever noticing his or her role in the problem.

Sides get drawn and issues become something to
fight over rather than something to resolve. Walls of protection get fortified
and distance grows. The experience of love quickly fades away.

We hurt each other over and over again, feeling
fully justified for everything we do. Serious damage is done, and none of it
is necessary.

Two people are required in order to create and
maintain this cycle of conflict. Fortunately, only one person is needed to end
it.

The cycle of conflict is like a tennis volley. As
soon as one person stops playing the game, the game is over.

You end the conflict by putting water on the fire
instead of more fuel. Put the focus on healing your relationship, not as
husband and wife, but as one human being to another.

To the extent that you are able to do this, you
gain cooperation instead of resentment. Issues get resolved quickly. You
become free inside and able to get on with your life.

To end the cycle of conflict and to heal your
relationship, take the following steps:

(1) Discover your role in the cycle of conflict.

(2) Heal the hurt that fuels the conflict and
sabotages your relationship.

(3) Release any upset, resentment, blaming or
hanging on that you may have towards the other person.

(4) Find solutions that work for both of you.

These steps are easier said then done, but once
you know how, the process is relatively easy. This site will walk you through
the steps.

As you work with the various sections and do what
they say, you will notice immediate results in your relationship.

At any moment, your life is exactly the way that
it is. You are the way you are and the people in your life are exactly the way
that they are. This is true whether you like it or not.

When you fight and resist the way your life is,
and how it may become, you create a state of fear and upset that destroys your
effectiveness and almost always makes your situation worse.

You close down inside. You get tunnel vision and
lose your ability to see clearly. You then interact in a way that destroys
love and creates opposition and resistance against yourself.

To handle a situation, you need action, not
resisting.

Resisting destroys love and keeps you from seeing
the action that you need to take.

If you could somehow let go of your resisting,
you would restore your peace of mind and your ability to see clearly. You
could then take the action you need to effectively handle your situation.

"Letting go" is the inner action that removes the
resisting which in turn releases the fear and upset.

The moment you let go, everything seems to
change. With the fear and upset gone, you become creative and able to discover
solutions you could never have seen before.

To see how this works, let's look at the nature
of fear.

Fear is created by avoiding and resisting a
future possible event.

For example, let's say that you are married and
that you are resisting the possibility of your spouse leaving. The more you
resist this future possible event, the greater your fear.

As your fear increases, so does the chance of
your fear coming true. You become threatened and hang on even more. This in
turn pushes your spouse further and further away.

By avoiding and resisting this future possible
event, you create a state of fear and upset that tends to bring you the very
event that you are avoiding. This is the nature of fear.

To have a fear lose its power, you need to do the
opposite of resisting. You need to be willing for the fear to happen. You
don't have to like it, and you don't have to sit around and do nothing. You
just have to be willing.

Letting go is strictly a state of mind and is
totally separate from your actions.

Letting go is what removes the fear and upset
so that you can see what action works.

For example, in your heart, be willing to lose
your spouse. But in your actions, do everything you can to create an
environment where he or she would never want to leave.

The moment you become willing to lose your
spouse, fear and upset lose their power. The tunnel vision disappears and you
become able to interact in a way that creates love and greatly increases the
chances of the person staying.

Be sure and read the example at the bottom of
this page.

To let go of your resistance and to restore your
peace of mind, be willing for your life to be however it is and however it may
become.

You do this by granting permission. "I am willing
for my spouse to leave." I give my spouse full permission to be exactly the
way he or she is." "I am willing to lose my home."

Let go of your demands and expectations for how
your life should be and make peace with the way your life is. Set yourself
free inside. Then take whatever action you need to have your life be great.

To make the process of letting go a little
easier, there are two very important steps that you can take.

The first step is trusting. Trust that no matter
what happens, you will be okay.

Now this doesn't mean that life will turn out the
way that you want it to. Life often doesn't. Trust is knowing that however
life turns out, you will be fine.

When you know that you will be fine, letting go
becomes relatively easy. As you let go, you restore your effectiveness and
life works out great. This then reinforces the trust.

When you don't trust, life becomes very
difficult. You fight, resist and hang on. You then make everything worse,
which reinforces "don't trust."

Trust is actually a choice. Trust is something
you create. It's a declaration. "I will be okay no matter what happens. I
trust, just because I say so."

Trust is also telling the truth. You really will
be fine no matter what happens. Life is only threatening when you resist. So
stop resisting and trust. Trust that no matter what happens, you will be fine.

The second and most important step in the
process of letting go is to be willing to feel your hurt.

This is important because it's the automatic
avoidance of this hurt that forces us to resist.

We think that we're resisting our circumstances
but we're not. We are resisting all the feelings and emotion that are being
reactivated by our circumstances.

More accurately, we are resisting a very specific
hurt from the past. We are resisting the hurt of feeling not good enough,
worthless, not worth loving, or some other form of feeling not okay.

Once you find and heal this hurt, the need to
resist or hang on disappears.

You can then let go and take the action you need
to effectively handle your situation.

Finding and healing this hurt is one of the most
important things you can ever do.

This hurt is responsible for all your fear and
all your upsets. It is responsible for all your self-sabotaging behavior and
ultimately, all of your suffering.

In relationships, the avoidance of this hurt
destroys the love, fuels the conflict and pushes people away.

Ginger was so afraid of losing Paul that she
tried to control his every move. Whenever she felt threatened, she would get
angry and upset. Without knowing, Ginger was pushing Paul further and further
away.

She was afraid of losing Paul because if he left
her, this would reactivate all her hurt of feeling not worth loving. To avoid
this hurt, Ginger hung on.

Once she realized this, Ginger started working
with her hurt. She allowed herself to feel all the hurt of being not worth
loving. As she did this, the loss of Paul ceased to be a threat. She became
willing to lose him. She didn't want to lose him, but she was willing.

The moment Ginger was willing to lose Paul, the
fear and upset lost its power. She saw her situation clearly and saw what she
needed to do.

She met with Paul and apologized for hanging on.
She told him to do whatever he needed to be happy, even if this meant his
leaving her. She told him that she loved him and that she wanted him to stay,
but that she was willing to lose him.

Within a few days, Paul realized that it was safe
to be around Ginger. He even enjoyed their time together. Soon, Paul felt so
loved and able to be himself around Ginger that he didn't want to go anywhere.

Healing your hurt restores your peace of mind.
It also restores your ability to see what needs to be done.

There are two steps in the healing process.
First, be willing to feel your hurt like a child. This releases the hurt.

Second, find and dismantle the inner mechanism that
creates your hurt in the first place. We'll talk more about this in the next
section.

To begin the healing process, lets talk about
feeling your hurt.

When you were born, you were created with the
natural ability to heal hurt.

Look at little children. Little children are
masters at healing hurt. When a child feels hurt, the child cries. Then, after
the child finishes crying, the hurt is all gone.

Little children are able to release their hurt
because they do something that we don't notice. They feel their hurt
willingly. This allows the hurt to run its course. It comes and then it goes.

This is the natural process for healing hurt. As
you allow yourself to feel your hurt willingly like a child, your hurt goes
away.

Unfortunately, we have been taught to do the
opposite. Instead of feeling our hurt willingly like a child, we have been
taught to fight our hurt. "Big boys and girls don't cry. If you want something
to cry about, I'll give you something to cry about."

You soon learn to avoid your hurt. This then
circumvents the natural healing process.

Instead of flowing with the hurt and letting it
go, you fight the hurt and keep it inside.

You try to push the hurt away, but you can't. The
hurt isn't outside of you, it's inside. So, in your attempt to push the hurt
away, you actually push the hurt deeper inside.

You suppress your hurt. You then spend the rest
of your life running from this hurt. But no matter what you do, you can't get
away from it. You will continue to experience these feelings whether you like
it or not.

As long as you have this hurt, it will get
triggered. Your only choice is to feel it willingly like a child or to feel it
unwillingly. When you feel your hurt unwillingly, the hurt turns into pain and
stays.

When you feel your hurt willingly like a
child, the hurt runs its course and disappears.

To see this in your life, find a time when you
were hurt and you allowed yourself to cry. Then, after you cried your last
tear, you felt a wonderful freedom. This is a time when you felt your hurt
willingly.

So feel your hurt willingly like a child. Keep
telling yourself, "It's okay to feel the hurt. It's okay." Let the hurt come
and let it go. Cry as hard as you can. Crying is the most powerful tool for
releasing hurt.

If you feel the hurt but there aren't any tears,
fake it. Fake the tears and get into the emotion. This can be just as
effective as feeling the real tears.

Reach in and grab all the hurt you can.
Exaggerate the hurt and feel it fully.

You may notice certain thoughts as you cry: "Why
did she do this?" "Why can't she love me." Let the thoughts guide your crying.
Cry each thought. Then move to the next one. Let the hurt take over.

Feel the hurt of your circumstances and the
deeper hurt of feeling worthless, not worth loving, a failure, and not good
enough.

It's not the truth that you are this way, it's
just a hurt, but it's a hurt that we'll do almost anything to avoid feeling.
"If I really am worthless, I might as well die."

Notice how painful it would be if you really were
this way. Notice how much you have avoided this hurt.

This is the hurt that runs your life.

Subconsciously, anything that triggers this hurt
becomes a serious threat. Instantly, you become full of fear and upset. You
get tunnel vision and lose your ability to see clearly. All you can do is
fight, resist, hang on or withdraw.

This hurt is responsible for all your suffering
and all your self-sabotaging behavior.

Finding and healing this hurt is the single
most important thing you can ever do.

When you were a young child, you were pure love.
You were happy, alive and free. Unfortunately, you were born into a world that
suppresses this state. As a result, you got hurt, and you got hurt a lot.

As a little child, the only way you could explain
these painful losses of love was to blame yourself. In a moment of hurt, you
bought the notion that you were worthless, not good enough, a failure, not
worth loving, or in some other way, "not okay".

This wasn't the truth, but to a little child,
this was the only explanation that made any sense at the time. You then hated
the very notion that you created. "No one can ever love me if I'm worthless.
Worthless is a horrible way to be."

The moment you bought the notion that you were
"not okay", you created a mechanism that would then sabotage the rest of your
life.

From that moment on, the underlying focus of your
life would be to avoid this hurt.

You may never notice this hurt but it is
certainly there. It determines your actions and shapes your life.

A good way to see this hurt is to notice what
happens the moment you get upset. Notice the immediate surge of feelings and
emotion that come forth. This is the hurt that runs your life.

Any circumstance that reactivates this hurt
then becomes a threat that must be avoided at all cost.

To protect yourself from this threat, you
automatically fight, resist and hang on.

This fighting and resisting then creates a state
of fear and upset that sabotages your life. You destroy love and create
opposition and resistance against yourself.

Ultimately, the avoidance of this hurt is
responsible for all your self-sabotaging behavior and all your suffering.

The irony is that the more you fight these
feelings of being not okay, the stronger they become and the more they run
your life.

Everything you do to avoid this hurt actually
creates more of the very hurt that you are avoiding.

To see how this works, be sure and read the
examples at the end of this section.

The avoidance of these feelings is what gives
them power. Here is a short exercise that can demonstrate this:

Imagine four large yellow balloons on the ceiling
above you, but don't think about them. Whatever you do, don't think about
those four large yellow balloons on the ceiling above you. You just thought
about them. Don't do that.

Notice what happens when you try not to think
about the yellow balloons. You keep thinking about them. In fact, you can
hardly think about anything else. Your resisting keeps the thought alive.

The same is true with the feelings of being
worthless, not good enough, or whatever your issue is. Ultimately, these
feelings are only a thought, but by your resisting the thought of being this
way, you give the thought power and carry it with you day after day.

To heal this hurt and to be free inside, you
need to do the opposite of fighting and resisting. You need to find the
specific hurt that you've been avoiding and make peace with it.

As you do this, the hurt loses power and
disappears.

The best way to find your hurt is to look at your
upsets.

Make a list of all the major upsets that you've
had in your life. Then find the hurt that's under each upset. The hurt will
always be some form of "not okay."

For each upset, go back in time to the moment the
upset began. Then move to the hurt and ask yourself this question: "What do
those circumstances say about me?"

If someone leaves you, this may say that you are
not worth loving. If you lose your job, this may say that you are a failure.

Find the words that hurt the most. The more
painful the words, the closer you are to your hurt.

For most people, the bottom line hurt is that of
feeling worthless.

A list of common issues follows this section.

As you work with your upsets you will discover
that the same hurt keeps showing up in your life, over and over. This is the
hurt that runs your life.

After you find the specific hurt that you've been
running from, the next step is to do the opposite of fighting it, which is to
embrace it.

Allow yourself to feel the hurt of being this
way. Cry if you can. Then, while you are feeling this hurt, look at your life
and see all the evidence to prove that this is indeed an aspect of you.

Find the evidence to prove that you are
worthless, not good enough, not worth loving, a failure or whatever else
you've been avoiding.

The evidence will be there if you are willing to
see it. It has to be. It wouldn't keep showing up in your life if it wasn't
part of you. You don't have to like it. You just have to tell the truth about
it. Let it in.

Worthless is part of you. It's also no big
deal. You are also worthy. Worthless and worthy are both aspects of being
human.

So allow yourself to be human. Allow yourself to
feel all the hurt of being worthless, not good enough, a failure or whatever
your issue is.

The more you let in the fact that this is an
aspect of you, the more impossible it is to run from it. When you can't run
from it, you can't fight it. When you can't fight it, the issue loses power
and disappears.

It's just like the yellow balloons. If you stop
fighting them and let them be there, they go away.

As you heal this hurt, your whole life then
begins to change.

Instead of creating a life of fear and upset, you
create a life of love. You restore the happiness, the freedom and the
aliveness that you once had. You see life clearly and you become far more
effective.

In relationships, you can end the conflict and
restore the love, one human being to another.

The process for finding and healing this hurt is
very simple and very fast. All you need is the desire to be free.

Example 1

When Rhonda was growing up, her father was so
occupied with his work that he seldom paid any attention to her. When he did
pay attention, he would yell at her. She felt totally unloved.

As a result, Rhonda couldn't help but buy the
notion that she wasn't worth loving. This wasn't the truth, but this became a
hurt that she would spend the rest of her life running from.

To avoid this hurt, Rhonda would interact in a
way that would sabotage all of her relationships.

Anytime something implied that she wasn't worth
loving, she would become full of fear and upset. She would try to control life
and force people to be a certain way.

No matter how hard the men in her life tried,
they could never treat Rhonda "worth loving" enough. She would constantly be
upset about one thing or another.

She would also hang on to the men in her life.
She had to, because if someone left, that would reactivate all her hurt. To
avoid this hurt she hung on.

Rhonda was so hard to live with, she pushed
everyone away.

Finally, after her third and most painful
divorce, she noticed that there was a pattern in her life. She realized that
she must have something to do with her relationship problems.

This was the point when Rhonda's life turned
around.

It wasn't hard for Rhonda to see that "not worth
loving" was an aspect of her. She spent her entire life running from this, but
now the hurt was so much in her face, she could no longer deny it. The
evidence was overwhelming.

As she owned this aspect of herself and allowed
herself to cry, the hurt that ran her life began to fade away. She then
realized that "not worth loving" was just part of being human. What a
wonderful freedom.

"I'm not worth loving, how great. Now I don't
have to prove to myself and to everyone else that I am worth loving. Now I can
just be me." She started laughing once she saw the joke that she had been
playing on herself.

From that moment on, the hurt had lost its power.

Rhonda was then able to go on and find the
relationship of her dreams, and most importantly, she was able to keep it.

Example 2

Mark spent his life running from the hurt of
failure, trying to become a success.

In his attempt to avoid the hurt of failure, he
would overspend and take unreasonable financial risks. He lived in a state of
fear and upset. He lost his ability to see clearly and he interacted in a way
that continued to produce more failure.

Finally, he failed so big, he was forced to face
this aspect of himself. He lost everything. He lost his property, his office
and even his home. Failure was in his face like never before.

Then there was a moment when Mark let in what a
failure he was. He looked over his life and saw one failure after another.

Mark was forced to let in what he had feared the
most. He was a failure. He could no longer avoid or deny it. Success was also
an aspect of Mark, but at the moment, all he could see was failure.

This was a very painful time for Mark, but the
moment he let in what a failure he was, something shifted inside. His fear of
failure lost its power. How can you run from something that is always there?
It's like running from your shadow. You can't.

Mark was sad for a while but soon his whole
outlook toward life seemed to change. The fear and upset that ran his life was
no longer there. He no longer had to be a success. For the first time in many
years, Mark was able to be himself. What an incredible relief!

With the fear of failure gone, Mark was able to
put his focus on creating a life that worked. He stopped overspending and got
out of debt.

He continued to go for his dreams, but he did so
in a way that worked. As time went on, his dreams began to come true. Now he
has a life that he could never have imagined before.

If possible, have someone read them to you.
Hearing an issue is much more reactivating than reading one.

Listen to each word as though someone was
accusing you of being that way. Notice which words reactivate the most hurt.

Also, pay particular attention to any words that
you are certain aren't part of you. You wouldn't need to deny a particular
word unless you had an issue with it. Find the words that hurt the most.

For most people, the bottom line hurt is
worthless.

How do you feel at the notion that these
characteristics accurately describe you?

unlovable
not wanted
not needed
disposable
a throw-away
not worth loving
not worth respecting
worthless
no good
not good enough
don't measure up
not enough
not good enough to be loved
have no value
inadequate
insufficient
less than
useless
insignificant
a nothing
unimportant
don't count
don't matter
a nobody
a loser
a failure
can't cut it
don't have what it takes
incompetent
screwed up
something is wrong with you
can't do anything right
stupid
unstable
inferior
defective
weak
helpless
needy
clingy
a wimp
a coward
irresponsible
unreliable
lazy
self-centered
inconsiderate
selfish
dishonest
bad
wrong
evil
heartless
ugly
fat
a slut
just like your parents

Notice that some of these words are painful and
some aren't. Find the words that hurt the most.

No matter what happens in your relationship, you
have something to do with it.

Once you discover your role in the problem, you get
your power back. You can turn your situation around. When you can't see your
role in the problem, you lose your power and you stay stuck forever.

We've been taught that relationships are 50/50 but
they're not. They are 100/100. Each person is 100% responsible for the presence
or absence of love.

In any relationship, each person is constantly
reacting to the other. No matter how someone gets treated, that person will
react accordingly.

Notice what happens when someone accepts and
appreciates you. You feel loved and automatically accept and appreciate that
person in return.

Now notice what happens when someone is judgmental
and critical towards you.

You get upset and become judgmental and critical in
return. However you get treated, you will respond accordingly.

This makes the other person 100 % responsible for
the presence or absence of love in your relationship. It makes you 0 % because
no matter what the other person does, you are going to react quite naturally.

At the same time, the other side of the coin is
also true. How you treat the other person determines how that person will
respond to you. This makes you 100 % responsible and the other person 0 %.

Each person in a relationship is constantly
reacting to the other. At the same time, each person is constantly determining
the other person's reaction.

In other words, each person is 100% responsible for
the presence or absence of love.

Unfortunately, we seldom notice our 100%. We only
notice how the other person treats us. We can easily see the other person's
responsibility, but we can't see our own.

When you can't see your 100%, all you can do is
react. When all you can do is react, you have no ability to determine what will
happen.

If you want a relationship to work, you need to
accept your 100 %. You need to make sure the other person feels loved, accepted
and appreciated. When you are reacting, this becomes impossible.

Usually, it's just a matter of time until someone
gets hurt and upset. That person then puts up his or her walls of protection and
either resists, attacks or withdraws.

Then the other person gets upset and does the same
thing in return. Then the first person gets more upset and reacts more
forcefully toward the other.

Without knowing, you create a cycle of conflict, a
cycle of resisting, attacking and withdrawing from each other. This cycle then
goes on and on without either person ever noticing his or her role in the
conflict.

To create and maintain this cycle, there must be
two people participating.

It is physically impossible to have a cycle of
conflict with only one person. Each person is 100% responsible.

Once you discover your role in the conflict, you
can do something about it. You can stop the non-accepting. You can end the cycle
of conflict and restore the love.

Take a moment and look at your relationship. Find
your 100 % responsibility for the loss of love. Notice how non-accepting and
critical you have been. Notice how you have hurt the other person and how that
person has gotten upset and given it back to you.

The other person is also fully responsible, but so
what. When you point at the other person's responsibility, you may be telling
the truth, but it doesn't change your situation. You just give your power away.

To have your life be as great as it can be, you
need to give up the blaming. Find your role in the problem.

Then take whatever action you need to handle your
situation.

Once you discover your 100% responsibility, you get
your power back. You can then take the action you need to heal your relationship
and to create a life that works.

Example

Ed and Joanne argued constantly. Each was angry and
resentful toward the other.

At first, Ed could only see how Joanne treated him.
All he could see were the hateful things she did to him. The situation looked
hopeless until Ed saw his responsibility for what was happening.

Then he began to look at the relationship from
Joanne's point of view. He saw how critical and non-accepting he had been of
her. He saw how much he had hurt Joanne and how this had forced Joanne to be
hard and resentful.

Once Ed saw the truth of his 100% responsibility,
he permanently altered his relationship with Joanne. Even though Joanne was also
100% responsible, Ed could no longer blame her for what had happened.

Ed took responsibility for the success of his
relationship. He stopped being demanding and critical. He made sure Joanne felt
loved, accepted and appreciated.

The relationship altered almost overnight. The
constant arguing stopped. Joanne felt safe and let go of her walls of
protection. Each expressed more and more love for each other.

The healing began the moment Ed accepted his full
100% responsibility. Now he has a relationship that works.

Guilt and resentment are states of mind that
destroy love and create suffering. They seem to be caused by what happened but
they're not. They are caused by how you relate to what happened.

Fortunately, since you created them, you can also
release them. Use this section to learn how.

Guilt

When you have guilt, you reinforce the feelings of
being not okay. You lose your confidence and self-respect. You feel undeserving
and you hold yourself back.

The key to releasing guilt is to recognize that we
all go through life doing the very best we can with the extremely limited skills
and awareness that we have at the time.

Unfortunately, the awareness that we have is seldom
enough. As a result we make mistakes. Sometimes we make big ones.

Making mistakes is part of the human process. This
is how we learn. Every time you make a mistake you learn a little more about
life. You then become wiser and more aware.

Five years from now you will be much wiser than you
are today, but the wisdom you will have five years from now doesn't do you any
good today. This is true because today, you don't have it.

Likewise the wisdom that you have today didn't do
you any good back when you made your mistake. This is true because back then,
you didn't know what you know today. You only knew what you knew.

To see this in your life, go back in time to the
moment you made your mistake. Notice that at the time, you had a very particular
state of mind and a very particular way of seeing life. Notice that you acted
totally consistent with where you were at the moment.

If you knew then what you know today, you could
have acted very differently, but you didn't. Even if you thought you knew
better, you didn't know the consequences like you do today.

So here is the big question: Are you willing to
forgive yourself for not knowing? Are you willing to forgive yourself for not
being wiser and more aware? You might as well. If you look, you did the very
best you could with where you were at the time.

Forgive yourself. Forgive yourself for not being
wiser and more aware. Forgive yourself for acting consistent with your limited
awareness and forgive yourself for the damage that you caused as a result of
your not knowing.

Allow yourself to be human.

Resentment

When you have a resentment, a major part of you
closes down. You become bitter and less able to express your love. You lose your
aliveness and your joy for life. You put up walls of protection and you make
your life more difficult.

Letting go of a resentment is not for the benefit
of the other person. It's for you.

When you resent someone, you are saying very
forcefully, that the other person is the problem, the cause and the fault. Not
you. You forcefully blame the other person so you don't have to look at
yourself.

If you looked at yourself, you would have to
experience all the hurt from what happened. You would have to feel all the hurt
of being not good enough, not worth loving or some other form of not okay. To
avoid this hurt, you resent.

The first step in releasing a resentment is to be
willing to feel this hurt. Look under the resentment and find what you really
avoiding. Find the feelings of being not good enough or not worth loving that
you don't want to feel. Then be willing to experience them. Cry if you can.

Once you are willing to feel this hurt, the need
for the resentment disappears.

The next step is to notice that the person you
resent has a very particular state of mind and a very particular way of seeing
life. Notice that this person has a very limited awareness and acts totally
consistent with his or her limited skills and ability.

Now notice that if this person was wiser and more
aware, then he or she would be able to act very differently, but the person
isn't wiser and more aware. This person only has the limited awareness that he
or she has.

This person is doing the very best he or she can
with his or her very limited ability. Notice how much this person suffers as a
result of his or her limited equipment.

Now ask yourself, Are you willing to forgive this
person for not being wiser and more aware? Are you willing to forgive this
person for acting consistent with his or her limited ability? Are you willing
for forgive this person for the damage that was caused?

Remember that forgiveness is for you, not the other
person. Forgiveness is a choice. Let go of your resentment and get on with your
life.

Love by itself is never enough to have a
relationship work. The divorce courts are full of people who love each other. If
you want your relationship to work, you need to make sure the other person
actually feels loved.

This is true whether you stay together or get a
divorce. To the extent you have the experience of love in your relationship,
your relationship will be supportive and relatively effortless.

You create the experience of love by giving the
gift of acceptance and appreciation. Just look at how you feel when someone
genuinely accepts and appreciates you. Doesn't this feel great? Of course it
does.

You feel better about yourself and better about
your life. You also feel better about the person who accepts and appreciates
you. Automatically, you become accepting and appreciative in return.

Now notice how you feel when someone is
non-accepting towards you. Notice how you feel when someone is critical of you
or tries to change you. Notice how fast the experience of love disappears.

Instantly, you get hurt. You get upset and close
down. You put up your walls of protection and automatically become non-accepting
and critical in return.

Then the other person gets upset, puts up his or
her walls of protection, and becomes even more non-accepting towards you.

Then you get even more upset. Your walls of
protection get stronger and you become more critical of the other person. Then
that person gets more upset and becomes more resentful of you. Then you become
more hateful towards the other person.

Without knowing, you create a cycle of conflict, a
cycle of resisting, attacking and withdrawing from each other. This cycle of
conflict then destroys your relationship and produces tremendous suffering.

If you have any relationship that isn't working,
this cycle is present. If you want to heal your relationship and end the
conflict, you need to end this cycle.

Fortunately, all it takes is one person.

The cycle of conflict is like a tennis volley. Two
people are needed to keep the cycle going. Only one is needed to end it. When
one person stops playing the game, the cycle is over.

You stop playing the game when you give acceptance
and appreciation instead of being critical and resentful.

To make the shift from criticalness to acceptance,
you need to let go of your resistance. You can do this by taking the following
steps:

1. Find and heal the hurt that has been reactivated
by the other person.

Ultimately, the reason you are non-accepting is
because the other person has reactivated some hurt in you. As you heal this
hurt, the need to resist disappears. You can then interact in a way that creates
love instead of destroying it.

2. Give the person full permission to be the way he
or she is.

Notice that the other person is the way he or she
is whether you like it or not. Your feelings are totally irrelevant. Hating the
way someone is doesn't change a thing. That person is still exactly the way he
or she is.

When you fight the truth of how someone is, you
fuel the cycle of conflict and you lose your ability to see what needs to be
done. When you are at peace with the way someone is, you see your situation
clearly. You can see what needs to be done and you can do it in a way that is
supportive.

3. Forgive the person.

When you resent someone, a big part of you closes
down. You become bitter and lose your ability to love. You also interact in a
way that automatically creates opposition and resistance against yourself.
Forgiveness is not for the other person, forgiveness is for you.

When you hang on to someone, you push the person
away. The person feels suffocated and has to fight for breathing room. Just look
at how you feel when someone hangs on to you. To have any relationship work, you
have to be willing to lose the person.

Relationships are not 50/50. They are 100/100. Each
person is 100% responsible for the presence or absence of love in a
relationship. Once you see your 100% responsibility for the loss of love, you
can no longer blame the other person. You also become more effective in all your
future relationships.

Any characteristic that you can't stand in another
person is an aspect of you that you can't stand in yourself. Once you discover
that this characteristic is also in you, your resistance towards the other
person gets replaced with compassion. You also become more at peace with
yourself.

7. Get with the person and clean up your
relationship.

Once you let go of your resistance towards someone,
the next step is to get with the person and clean up your relationship. Tell the
person that you've had some major self-discoveries and that now you're
interacting in a new way.

Take full responsibility for what happened and ask
the person to please forgive you. If you have been hanging on, give the person
freedom to leave.

Say whatever you need to say to clean up your
relationship. Then follow your statement up with action. Make sure the other
person always feels loved, accepted and appreciated.

Every time you interact with someone, you will
either create love or destroy love, and whatever you give will come right back.

So put the focus on ending the conflict and
restoring the love, not necessarily as husband and wife, but as one human being
to another.

As you do this, you will heal both your
relationship and your hurt. You will also create a life that is a lot more
enjoyable.

Arguments can cause serious damage in a
relationship. They destroy the experience of love and make people defensive.
They create distance and escalate the cycle of conflict.

Fortunately, they can easily be avoided. Once you
become aware of how they work, you can stop the conflict before it does much
damage.

To see how an argument works, look at the following
situation.

Jennifer says something to Robert that strikes a
nerve. Instantly Robert is threatened. He can't just hear what Jennifer has to
say. He has to fight it. He has to get rid of the threat.

He then tells Jennifer that she is wrong or that
she doesn't know what she's talking about. He does whatever he can to make the
communication go away.

This in turn strikes a nerve in Jennifer. She gets
upset and puts up her walls of protection. Without thinking, she raises her
voice and uses force to get her point across.

Robert then becomes more threatened and fights her
communication more forcefully than before.

He couldn't care less about what Jennifer has to
say. He is only interested in eliminating the threat and getting her to hear his
point of view. He then tries to force his communication on Jennifer.

Of course, Jennifer isn't interested in what he has
to say. She is only in interested in getting her point of view across.

Both Jennifer and Robert enter into a form of
tug-of-war. Both are trying to push their opinion on the other, but no one is
listening.

This is the nature of an argument. Nothing gets
resolved and everyone gets upset. The cycle of conflict grows and people become
more and more distant.

Take a moment and look at the arguments in your
life. Notice that neither one of you are listening to the other and both of you
are getting upset. Notice the damage that this does to your relationship.

If you want to avoid arguments in your life, you
can. The key is very simple. Don't participate.

It takes two people to have an argument. It only
takes one to end it.

The next time you find yourself in the middle of an
argument, stop. Stop talking and listen. Listen to the other person's
communication and hear it from his or her point of view.

Look for the fear and hurt that is behind the
words. Be interested in what the person has to say. You don't have to like it or
agree with it. Just hear it.

By listening to what the other person has to say,
you take away his or her resistance against you. You then create an environment
where the other person can hear what you have to say.

Once both of you have said everything you need to
say, you can start looking for solutions. Until you get each other's
communication, finding solutions is almost impossible.

In every divorce, there are certain issues that
need to be resolved. Decisions need to be made about the care and support of the
children. How will the debts and the property be divided?

How you go about resolving these issues is
extremely important. It determines the type of divorce you have and it sets the
stage for how your relationship will be in the future.

Normally we handle these questions in a way that
causes tremendous damage. Here's what usually happens:

Two people start out being in love. Then someone
gets hurt. Then that person puts up his or her walls of protection and
automatically withdraws and becomes critical of the other.

Then the other person gets upset and becomes more
judgmental toward the first person. Then the first person gets more upset and
becomes more hateful toward the other.

Without knowing, the couple creates a cycle of
conflict that goes on and on without either person ever noticing his or her role
in the problem.

The suffering that comes from this conflict is
painful enough, but as soon as you add the threat of losing your children, your
financial resources and your well-being, the situation quickly becomes much
worse.

Now the situation is threatening. This potential
loss of well-being can be a serious threat to a person's survival. It can make a
person fight as though his or her life depends on it.

The moment this happens, the cycle of conflict
escalates dramatically.

Often this conflict escalates into full scale war.
People become so full of fear, upset, anger and resentment, that they do
horrible things to each other.

The hurt and destruction are enormous.
Relationships are destroyed and financial resources are lost. The pain and
suffering are often so great that people never recover.

The sad part is that none of this conflict and
suffering is necessary. We bring it on ourselves.

We think that we need to fight for protection. We
believe that if we just fight hard enough, then somehow, everything will get
resolved in our favor. Not so. In fact, the opposite is true.

The more you fight someone, the more of a threat
you become to that person. You force that person to fight you even harder. This
in turn puts you at even greater risk.

Everything you do as an adversary creates more
adversariness against you.

Besides, when all the fighting is over, the issues
that you fought so hard to win rarely get resolved the way you want them to. In
most cases, the issues get resolved in some sort of compromise with no one being
happy.

The final solution is one that you could have
worked out between the two of you with a lot less effort and a lot less expense.

The key to resolving issues without conflict is to
stop being a threat to the other person. Be committed to finding solutions that
are fair and that work for everyone.

When someone is committed to everyone's well being,
the adversarial process stops.

How can you fight someone that's on your side?

As a matter of physics, adversariness requires two
opposing forces. When one opposing force is removed, the adversariness
disappears. It takes two people to be adversaries. It only takes one person to
stop it.

As soon as you draw sides against someone, you
create an opposing force. So don't draw sides. Keep your focus on finding
solutions where everyone wins. This is the key to resolving issues without
conflict.

When you focus on everyone's well-being, you create
an environment of cooperation and understanding.

You can then work together to find solutions, and
when you look for solutions, you find them.

This is how you resolve issues. You find solutions.

This makes perfect sense, but as crazy as it may
seem, in an adversarial situation, there is no focus on finding solutions. None.
All the focus is on winning.

When there is no focus on resolving issues, they
don't get resolved.

Trying to resolve issues in an adversarial
situation is like playing tug-of-war. It takes forever to accomplish anything
and every step is full of effort and struggle.

In most contested cases, the people are so caught
up in the fighting that they don't even know what the issues are. It's insane.
So keep your focus on finding solutions.

Look for the other person's fears and concerns.

Look beyond what the person is asking and find what
the person needs.

For example, the real issue behind most custody
cases is the fear of losing the children. When you can insure easy access and
broad visitation, the fear loses power, and so does the need to fight for
custody.

If the issue is child support or alimony, you can
find what the court would do and agree to that.

If you can't come to an agreement, use the services
of a mediator.

Whatever the issue, there is a way to resolve it.

Sometimes you find the answers quickly. Sometimes
you don't. Just make sure you don't stop looking.

Finding solutions that work for everyone also
includes you. A commitment to everyone doesn't mean that you have to give up
your soul in the name of cooperation. You don't have to be taken advantage of.

Sometimes you need to be careful. Some people are
dishonest. Sometimes you need to say "no." Sometimes you may need to go to the
judge. Do whatever it takes to find solutions that work for both of you. Just
don't lose sight of your commitment to everyone's well-being.

Even if the other person demands everything and
refuses to cooperate, don't draw sides. As difficult as your situation may seem
at the moment, it can get much worse.

Keep looking for solutions that work for everyone.

The type of divorce and the type of relationship
you have is determined by how you treat the other person and how you resolve
your differences.

You can keep your pride, draw sides and go to town
on each other; or you can be committed to a relationship where everyone comes
out ahead.